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Asus P6X58D Premium Review

Closer Look:

The BIOS is the heart of any motherboard in the eyes of a true enthusiast. Stored on a 16MB Flash ROM chip, this American Megatrends BIOS does not disappoint. To keep things organized, it is split into multiple sections, with the overclocking settings on the second tab, dubbed AI Tweaker, which I will go into further detail on the next page.

Main:

When you first go into the BIOS, you will open to the Main tab. Here you will find controls to adjust the system time, date, and language. You will also be able to see and tweak all the connected SATA connections here. You can change things such as SMART monitoring and storage modes. You can also Write Protect certain drives and view basic system information from this tab.

Ai Tweaker:

Here is where you go to start messing with clock speeds and voltages. There is so much, in fact, that I am going to only give a brief glimpse of the section here and use the entire next page to go into detail about what this section looks like.

Advanced:

Moving on to the Advanced tab brings you to five sub-headers; CPU configuration, Chipset, Onboard Devices Configuration, USB Configuration, and PCIPnP controls. The CPU config link takes you to a page which allows you to adjust all of your CPU's features, which I will cover on the next page. Chipset settings include both Northbridge and VT-d settings. Onboard Device settings, lets you customize all the P6X58D Premium's peripheral goodies, which extends to the USB menu pertaining to all things USB. Finally, you've got the toggle for whether or not your Operating System is Plug and Play compatible.

Power:

The Power tab covers just that; power. Here you can monitor voltages, adjust fan speeds, and toggle suspend modes available to the OS.

Boot:

Here you can customize just how your system starts up. You can set primary boot devices, switch HDDs, and toggle the full screen logo. You may also change security settings.

Tools:

Under the Tools tab, you can control all the extra features that Asus includes with the board. You can toggle the Express Gate SSD from booting, which houses the Linux distro on it; quite useful in a pinch. Also found here is the EZ-Flash software, which allows you to safely and easily mount and flash a new BIOS update, which is usually pretty reliable. You've also got the AI NET options and the OC Profile page, which lets you save eight different profiles to go back to after changing settings.

Finally, you've got the Exit tab. Here you have all the options available to get out of the BIOS. Needless to say, this is pretty self-explanatory. On to an in-depth view at the AI Tweaker section!